Positive Impact

Accuro Jersey proud sponsor of Alive and Kicking programme: “Bounce back from COVID-19” in Kenya

Accuro is delighted to have been able to play a part in supporting a wonderful charitable initiative: the Jersey 2 Africa 4 Football (“J2A”). This programme is a partnership between ‘Alive and Kicking’ – an ethical ball manufacturer and a leading expert in the use of sport to deliver vital health education and their delivery partner ‘The Football Foundation for Africa’. The programme delivers vital COVID-19 and mental health education to thousands of young people from local communities throughout Kenya. The programme also supports employment at ‘Alive and Kicking’ for over 40 adults, ensuring that they are able to support themselves and their families.

At Accuro we are always looking at ways that we can support local communities wherever we have a presence through the location of our offices, clients or charitable organisations that we work with. Our focus when working with charitable organisations is in relation to education, physical and mental health and wellbeing and family.

Jersey has close ties with Kenya and other African countries through people living on the Island, trust companies, banks and other finance businesses and, of course, Jersey Finance.

Our sponsored ball donation benefitted the Stadium Homeless Academy located in one of the poorest regions of Nairobi.

Accuro announces Employee Benefit Trust for all staff

Award winning independent private client fiduciary Accuro has announced a new Employee Benefit Trust for the benefit of all of its staff. Accuro’s management own over 90% of the firm and with the balance being settled into an EBT (administered from Jersey), this ensures all staff throughout the Group share in its profitability and success.

The launch of the EBT celebrates the rise of Accuro following its management buyout and its remarkable story, evidenced by impressive growth and the buy-out of its external private investor within just three years of launch.

Commenting, Xavier Isaac, CEO of Accuro said: “Our new EBT demonstrates our commitment to embracing a broader purpose than serving only shareholders. Our staff are key stakeholders in our business. In 2017 we pledged to broaden equity participation in our Group to all staff. We are proud to have fulfilled this so quickly. We also see this as a meaningful step within our mission, which is to care for families, their wealth and legacy whilst leading positive change in the global trust industry. Investing in our staff ensures we can put our clients first and assure the future succession of our business from within. It also reinforces our culture; we see all our staff as partners and as proud ambassadors of the Accuro brand.”

For more information please contact:

Xavier Isaac, Tel: +41 22 807 2050

Accuro Trust Jersey winner of the Leaders in WellBeing Awards 2020 in the Mental Health category

We are delighted to announce that Accuro Trust Jersey was chosen as the Winner of the Mental Health Award on the occasion of the Leaders in WellBeing Awards 2020 which took place virtually on Friday 6th November 2020.

‘Leaders in WellBeing’ celebrates the wellbeing related activities of organisations and individuals primarily in the Channel Islands; including corporates, entrepreneurs, health and wellbeing practitioners, government bodies, departments and schools, charities and not-for-profit organisations.

Paul Douglas, Managing Director of Accuro Trust Jersey said: “We at Accuro in Jersey are absolutely delighted with this award, particularly as this is the second time that we have won in this category. When considering the spike in mental health issues in society caused by the COVID pandemic we are very pleased that we invested early in this important area. We are honoured that our efforts have been recognised by the judges again. It is also wonderful to have been shortlisted for another three of this year’s WellBeing awards. As an organisation we place a lot of emphasis on the various strands of wellbeing and this in turn pays back to the business tenfold. Our team are much healthier, engaged and energised which certainly benefits our clients and intermediaries.”

Accuro – For an inclusive education!

Despite of the mounting post-covid sanitary protocols, Accuro Mauritius has come forward to help Austism Mauritius through their social committee. Accuro Mauritius proceeded with the donation of school materials, in the presence of their Managing Director Mr Gordon Stuart, the employees of Accuro Mauritius and the employees of this specialized institution, situated at Quatre-Bornes.

In his speech, Mr Gordon Stuart has furthered his engagement and that of his company to contribute to the betterment of the community through its social committee. He also added that since Accurro has strong family values, this was the perfect opportunity to give back to our children with special needs. M. Gordon left no stone unturned to celebrate the good work of the teachers and administration of this specialized institution. Accuro Mauritius brought about a humble contribution by donating school materials and tactile games to the children for their daily activities.

The Director of the school, Mrs Geraldine Aliphon, seized this opportunity to thank Accuro for their contribution, especially after the post-covid situation. Today we talk about the importance of inclusive education where every learner should benefit from the same learning opportunities carried out in a common learning environment. Our autist children need even more resources and a more specialized education platform.

A small get-together was held in the school’s yard where the employees of Accuro Mauritius had the chance to taste the delicious dishes prepared by our children with special abilities. It was in a pleasant and bubbly atmosphere that this event was carried out.

Please do not hesitate to contact Autism Mauritius on +230 428 0158, if ever, you want to donate.

Accuro Mauritius and Autism Mauritius

Jersey’s relationship to Africa – Accuro: Structuring for good causes

International private client families

Accuro administer a number of trust and company structures set up by Southern African resident families to attend to succession planning. These structures are also established to help private clients diversify their currency, economic and political risk from emerging market economies into developed markets.

While the planning is standard, the management and administration of multi-jurisdictional families is complex.

For example, it isn’t uncommon to have a family with their adult children resident in the US, UK and Canada.

Family business and co-investment opportunities

Accuro have also seen growth in structures established by South African businesses looking to expand into the UK and US using the same business models that have been successful for them in South Africa.

These clients want to diversify their holdings and dilute their investment risk by investing outside the country and in business sectors that they know well. The structures are tax transparent and approved by the local exchange control authorities, with the branch company being established in Jersey to hold the foreign assets. Property is a key theme but other investments in operating companies is also a growing feature.

Similarly, and because most of our clients are entrepreneurial, investments into Africa are made via offshore trust and corporate structures.

Philanthropy

Philanthropy is growing and Accuro have established structures to benefit numerous causes in countries in Africa. The use of structuring provides families with the governance and reporting infrastructure necessary for such giving. Under the guidance of philanthropy advisors, Accuro can help define the causes to support, build in a strategy, provide reporting on the structure’s impact and, where appropriate, assess its sustainability.

Published on 26 February 2020 in Jersey Finance, Jersey’s relationship with Africa

Best for Geneva – Accuro’s Local Community contribution

Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: What are you doing for others?” — Martin Luther King, Jr.

Earlier this year, Accuro in Geneva announced its participation in “The Best for Geneva Challenge”, a program that brings together all Geneva businesses wishing to add more value to their jobs, strengthen the diverse Geneva communities and preserve a healthier environment. Accuro is determined to develop and improve its social and environmental practices and to drive positive change in its trust industry. It is in this context that Accuro offered to its employees time off to volunteer with FOUNDATION PARTAGE. The latter is a food bank that collects and sorts unsold stock from Geneva’s food stores in order to distribute them to associations and social services helping those in need in Geneva.

PARTAGE’s model is based on three pillars of sustainable development:

Social: they help those in a precarious situation and who fight hunger
Economical: they are committed to jobseekers through the provision of professional rehabilitation and support measures
Ecological: they reduce food waste and have a low environmental footprint

Accuro employees assisted PARTAGE during two half a day sessions in December to sort food and health care products collected during the “Samedi du Partage” held on the 24th of November Samedi du Partage. The Accuro teams had a lot of fun in doing so too!

Accuro Geneva with Partage

Switzerland, an innovation hub for international philanthropy

Nowadays, philanthropists are looking to make an impact during their lifetime and are often involved in the projects they support. They go beyond the making of a gift by leveraging their skills and networks in order to support their philanthropy projects. In doing so, they surround themselves with professionals who can accompany them on their philanthropic journey, whether it is on the selection of projects, the structuring side (e.g. the creation of a family foundation or a personal fund within a hosting foundation) or the investment of the capital contributed (e.g. “Impact” or “Mission Related Investment”).

But to generate change, one needs innovation. This in turn requires the creation of a favourable ecosystem where people can connect, interact, debate and learn from each other. If, on top of that, the legal, tax, regulatory and supervisory frameworks surrounding these people are conducive to their intended activities, you have probably found an “innovation hub”. As far as international philanthropy is concerned, that hub has a name: Switzerland.

A city like Geneva, where Andre Dunant decided to create the Red Cross, illustrates perfectly the point. It is a rich city with numerous individual and corporate entrepreneurs and donors. Geneva provides useful links to experts from international organizations, NGOs and international conferences in areas such as human rights, environment, development, peace and refugees. These specialists might be available for exchanges and collaboration on philanthropy projects. It is also an international financial centre, where one can draw on the banking sector as well as asset management and structuring capabilities around the establishment of philanthropy foundations. The local authorities contribute to that dynamism by implementing initiatives aiming at simplifying or reducing the delay for processing a new foundation’s set up application. They collaborate closely with organisations like “SwissFoundations”, an independent body representing Swiss public foundations with a view to share knowledge and experiences through topical round tables. Together they work at building bridges between the philanthropic and the public sectors. This offer has been completed by the establishment in 2017 of the Geneva Centre for Philanthropy at the Geneva University, which aims at supporting the international development and promotion of Geneva as a platform for philanthropy.

Beyond Canton of Geneva, the Swiss philanthropy ecosystem is complemented by other academic initiatives like the creation by SwissFoundations in 2008 of the Centre for Philanthropy Studies (CEPS) at the Basel University. CEPS is the first interdisciplinary research and information centre for foundations and philanthropy in Switzerland. Last but not least, a new Chair on Family Philanthropy has been launched at IMD, the internationally based business school in Lausanne. Interestingly the Chair was created by a family business called Debipharm. The aim of the chair is to increase the social and financial impact of family philanthropy. It facilitates the creation of best practices and is the source of methodology to strengthen the analysis, decision-making processes, evaluation criteria, and governance in the area of family philanthropy. Another objective of the chair is to build upon and transmit common values to businesses and across family generations through philanthropy.

It is therefore no surprise that the sector of Swiss philanthropy foundations confirms its positive evolution observed over the last 5 years. With a total of 13.172 foundations and 349 new foundations established in 2016, Cantons of Zurich, Vaud, Bern and Geneva are the driving forces of such growth. To put these numbers into a European perspective, Switzerland shows a foundations’ density per 10,000 inhabitants of 16 against 2 for Germany and less than 2 for countries such as France, Spain and Italy.

It is also interesting to note the evolution of the philanthropic themes of Swiss foundations. Over the last 10 years, there has been a marked increase in the number of foundations active in the domains of research and education (+21%), environment (+50%) and international activities (+53%). The trend for newly created foundations is also to have broader goals, giving them more room to evolve over time.

Such a fertile territory makes Switzerland a trendsetter in international philanthropy with a couple of areas of particular expertise. One of them is the set up a personal philanthropic fund within a hosting foundation as an alternative to bespoke family philanthropy foundations. Whilst not a new concept as such, only a dozen of them have been established over the last 10 years, like the Swiss Philanthropy Foundation (SPF) in Geneva. With an initial starting capital or through an annual contribution, the fund’s assets are held in a segregated account, which is kept completely separate from the umbrella foundation’s other assets. Founders are not anymore the legal owners of the gifted assets but can suggest a preferred custodian bank and asset manager given the independence of the hosting foundation. The fund can be named according to the family’s wishes. The beauty of it is that you can focus the founder(s) efforts on achieving their philanthropy goals instead of being bogged down with the governance and administration burden of running a foundation. It is also cheaper to run. The funds are managed by a steering committee that includes the founder(s) or their representative and at least one member representing the hosting foundation. It can take as little as a few weeks to set it up.

Another area of excellence for Switzerland is sustainable finance. This refers to any form of financial service integrating environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria into the business or investment decisions. Green bonds, impact investing, credits for sustainable projects, microfinance and active ownership, all fall under the heading of sustainable finance. Under the leadership of the Swiss Sustainable Finance (SSF), an association founded in 2014, more than 90 members from the financial services sector, universities, the public sector and investors are promoting sustainable finance by informing, educating and catalysing growth. I have witnessed as member of SPF Financial Commission that ESG compliant investment is becoming an increasingly important topic on the donors’ agenda. It requires the involvement of innovative service providers who can provide an initial sustainability assessment of the securities portfolio and assist to clarify milestones for an evolution towards a more effective ESG impact. It then goes on with the reconstruction of the portfolio with a view to maximize both performance and positive investment decisions in line with the principles of sustainable development.

A last area worth mentioning are the many examples of successful cooperation between Swiss based foundations to achieve better and quicker results.

If you were still looking for evidence of Switzerland as an international philanthropy hub, I would encourage you to have a look at the distinction “GREAT!” recently distributed to 10 philanthropic initiatives selected by Swiss Philanthropy Foundation Council to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of the foundation. It is a firework of dynamic, innovative and diversified initiatives promoting philanthropy. But at the end of the day, all this has only one purpose: to encourage those who wish to start a philanthropic journey to do so, and to offer them the broader toolbox to achieve it with passion and professionalism.

Published on December 4 2017 by Eprivateclient

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